The mobile market is increasingly global, but every country or region has a specific combination of features that makes it unique. One important consideration is the popularity of Android versus iOS, with the latter skewing toward wealthy, higher-spending consumers, and the former toward the young and more cost-conscious.

However, the relative popularity of Android versus iOS is not enough to assess market potential. The quality and power of the mobile devices in use are at least as important. The share of high-spec devices in a market reflects the purchasing power of consumers, and high-end device owners tend to spend more on apps. In South Korea, for example, Android is the dominant OS because of Samsung, but the country has a very large share of high-end devices. Our app store intelligence shows that spending per device in South Korea is indeed very high compared to other Android-dominated markets.

A detailed look at Newzoo’s Global Mobile Monetization Metrics by type of device, powered by our partner DeltaDNA, further supports our view that high-end devices monetize better, with premium devices such as the Galaxy S7 and the iPhone 7 Plus monetizing best.

Using our Global Smartphone and Tablet Tracker, we can quantify the number of high-end devices being used in more than 100 countries. In the U.S., for example, 37.8% of all active devices in January were high end, a total of 94.3 million devices or consumers. We defined high-end devices as those that have at least 2GB of RAM, 2 CPU cores, NFC, fingerprint scanning, 4G compatibility, and were launched after 2014.

In India, the number was just under 15 million, or 5.3% of all active devices. This is a factor 7 lower than in the U.S., emphasizing how big the impact of technical specs can be on the addressable market size. Understanding the market penetration of these devices and optimizing your app for them will give you access to the highest value consumer in each market. In addition, many of our clients use our device intelligence to optimize product development. It allows them to create the right number of versions of their apps to serve the majority of a market. Screen size and resolution play a key role in this use case.

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